GM Oshawa Assembly is alive again

With a freshly paved test track, a growing parts operation and a newly restarted assembly line that began producing Chevrolet Silverado pickups Nov. 8, General Motors is using more of its sprawling Oshawa Assembly Plant than it has in decades.

“It’s damn near the whole place,” GM Canada President Scott Bell told Automotive News Canada. “We are leveraging and using parts of that facility that we haven’t commissioned since the ’60s.”

It is a dramatic reversal for the more than century-old site — which two years ago, it appeared, had churned out its final vehicle. GM spent a year and about $1.3 billion rapidly retooling the Ontario plant — giving Oshawa the distinction of being the only Canadian auto assembly plant to ever reopen after a complete closure.

The turnaround did come with one string attached.

“When you’re starting a plant and you want to go as fast as we’ve gone, you’ve kind of got to minimize the complexity within the plant and the [product] mix,” Bell said.

For the time being, this makes Oshawa the only plant in GM’s portfolio to exclusively produce Chevrolet — and not GMC-badged — pickups. It will also be the automaker’s only truck plant capable of building both heavy- and light-duty trucks. Its line is already assembling Silverado HDs and will add the light-duty Silverado in the spring.

GM declined to share its planned production figures. Sam Fiorani, vice-president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions LLC, projects that the plant will build 140,000 trucks a year by 2023, its first year of full production.

The added capacity will help GM meet resilient North American demand for pickups, though the microchip shortage and other supply chain problems might limit its short-term output.

“As we get into ’22, and hopefully we can get some microchips behind us, to have the opportunity to really fulfill the demand that’s in the marketplace is great for us,” Bell said. “And of course, it’s a very profitable vehicle for us and our dealers.”

He cited improvements in chip supplies heading into next year but said no “crystal clear” date has been set for a return to normal.

The restart of Oshawa will not immediately alleviate the tight inventory, Fiorani said.

“The pickup shortages have been mainly because of supplies of parts, not a lack of production,” he said.

Longer term, the added capacity will help GM keep pace with competitors, Fiorani said.

The automaker builds pickups at three other dedicated factories in North America. In pre-pandemic 2019, GM facilities in Flint, Mich., and Fort Wayne, Ind., produced about 185,000 and 300,000 pickups, respectively, while its plant in Silao, Mexico, built 365,000, according to the Automotive News Research & Data Center in Detroit.

BORDER RESTRICTIONS

The first Silverados built in Oshawa reached dealer lots this month.

The automaker on Dec. 23 said on Twitter that the truck bearing vehicle identification number (VIN) 001 was on its way to Paillé Chevrolet-Buick-GMC in Berthierville, Que., winner of the rights to purchase the first Oshawa-built  Silverado.

Bell could not say what portion of the plant’s output would be destined for Canadian dealers but said that over time, GM will aim to build every Silverado sold in Canada in Oshawa.

The one-year turnaround for Oshawa’s retooling was among the quickest in GM history, Bell said. Much of the automaker’s retooling team, which typically spends months on-site upgrading a plant, was based in the United States, and could not enter Canada because of COVID-19 restrictions. As a result, GM shed a number of more traditional approaches.

“We weren’t able to get people across the border, and so the team had to be very nimble and creative,” Bell said.

The team leveraged the new virtual norm in place of cross-border travel and used the microchip shortage to its advantage. When the CAMI Assembly Plant in Ingersoll, Ont., was idled because of the supply shortages, for instance, GM put some of the plant’s staff to work on the retrofits in Oshawa.

Ultimately, personnel installed more than 1,100 new robots, 500 kilometres of electrical wiring and 3.1 kilometres of conveyance.

‘BEGINNING OF SOMETHING’

The plant’s new production team reflects modern strides toward a more diverse manufacturing sector. Half of the 1,200 new hires at the plant are women.

The outcome is a direct result of the hiring team’s effort to dispel the longstanding stigma about women in manufacturing roles, Bell said. To promote inclusivity, GM adjusted its job advertisements and rooted out bias in its training program that favoured physicality over quality.

“With the equipment, the technology that we have, even building heavy-duty trucks, it’s not about brute strength, it’s really about doing that job right and doing it with a great attention to detail,” Bell said.

As the new hires gain experience, he said, GM will be able to draw from the pool of female talent to boost representation within its management. Today, women make up about 23 per cent of GM’s global workforce and roughly 20 per cent of its executives, according to the company’s 2020 sustainability report.

“Hopefully, this is the beginning of something for the long haul in all of our manufacturing facilities,” Bell said.

Oshawa will run on a single shift through this month before ramping up to two shifts in early 2022. GM has filled most of the 1,800 positions available at the plant and is in the final stages of training workers on the second shift.

‘CLEAN CANVAS’

Most are new to the five-million-square-foot (465,000-square-metre) plant, though around 500 of the 2,300 workers who were laid off when Oshawa closed in late 2019 retained their recall rights.

Unifor was transitioning the plant’s workforce when the retooling and restart were announced, said union President Jerry Dias. Starting with a relatively “clean canvas” let Unifor and the company work together on hiring a diverse workforce, Dias said.

A year after that process started, when the first pickup rolled off the line, the number of young workers created a palpably expectant atmosphere, he said.

“It’s not very often that you start a job and you think, ‘Boy, I’m going to be here for a long, long, long time,’ ” Dias said.

The city of Oshawa may no longer identify exclusively as an auto town, but Mayor Dan Carter said the “psychological factor” of the plant’s reopening has reenergized the community. The restart of production means the city of 170,000 will continue to hold a prominent position in the industry, he said.

“It will be different than it was 30, 40 or 50 years ago, but I think it will play an important role,” Carter said.

Along with the jobs at Oshawa Assembly, parts suppliers in the area have been able to ramp back up, returning thousands of jobs, Dias said. It also broadcasts a clear signal beyond Oshawa.

“It’s showing ... the claim of the death of our auto industry was premature, to say the least,” he said.